The Abyss Beyond Dreams

When images of a lost civilization are 'dreamed' by a self-proclaimed prophet of the age, Nigel Sheldon, inventor of wormhole technology and creator of the Commonwealth society, is asked to investigate. Especially as the dreams seem to be coming from the Void - a mysterious area of living space monitored and controlled because of its hugely destructive capabilities.

A Princess of Mars

A Princess of Mars was the first book by Edgar Rice Burroughs to feature the character John Carter. It led to an 11-book series featuring his adventures and became the basis for the 2012 movie. Carter is a war-weary former military captain during the Civil War who is inexplicably transported to Mars. He quickly (and reluctantly) becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions among the inhabitants of the planet.

The Phantom of the Earth: An Epic Sci-Fi Saga, Books 1-5

Here are the five thought-provoking postapocalyptic stories that lovers of science fiction can't stop talking about, gathered together in one volume for the first time. The futuristic theories, conspiracies, political maneuvering, and characters within these visionary tales will stay with you long after you finish.

Renegade: Spiral Wars, Book 1

One thousand years after Earth was destroyed in an unprovoked attack, humanity has emerged victorious from a series of terrible wars to assure its place in the galaxy. But during celebrations on humanity’s new Homeworld, the legendary Captain Pantillo of the battle carrier Phoenix is court-martialed then killed, and his deputy, Lieutenant Commander Erik Debogande, the heir to humanity’s most powerful industrial family, is framed with his murder.

Battlemage

"I can command storms, summon fire, and unmake stone. Animals have nothing interesting to say, and no one can see the future because it has not been written," growled Balfruss. "It's dangerous to meddle with things you don't understand." When you fight magic with magic, nothing is certain. Balfruss is a battlemage, one of a vanishing breed, sworn to fight and die for a country that fears and despises him.

Seeds of Earth: Humanity's Fire, Book 1

First contact: the dream that became a nightmare when the first alien life encountered swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invading forces, Earth's last, desperate roll of the die was to send out three colony ships - seeds of Earth - to different parts of the galaxy.

The Complete Book of Fallen Angels

My name is Darcy Anderson, and I am cursed with a dark power: Whenever my life is in danger, something inside me summons elemental fire to protect me. I cannot control this. One night, I was attacked in my home. The fire ... it raged out of control. I survived the inferno, but my house burned to the ground - with my parents inside. I was at a loss to explain to the courts what happened, and so they sent me to prison for 10 years for manslaughter.

The War in the West - A New History: Volume 1: Germany Ascendant 1939-1941

Are you ready for the truth about World War Two? In the first of an extraordinary three-volume account of the war on land, in the air and at sea, James Holland not only reveals the truth behind the familiar legends of the Second World War but he also unveils those lesser known events which were to have the greatest significance. The first book to consider the economic, political and social as well as the military aspects of World War Two, this is a unique retelling of a monumental event in all its terrible and majestic glory.

Mindstar Rising: The Greg Mandel Trilogy, Book 1

It's the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they're calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine. A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who's psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army's Mindstar Battalion.

Pushing Ice

2057. Humanity has raised exploiting the solar system to an art form. Bella Lind and the crew of her nuclear-powered ship, the Rockhopper, push ice. They mine comets. And they're good at it. The Rockhopper is nearing the end of its current mission cycle, and everyone is desperate for some much-needed R & R, when startling news arrives from Saturn: Janus, one of Saturn's ice moons, has inexplicably left its natural orbit and is now heading out of the solar system at high speed.

Elseerian: The Chronicles of Lumineia, Book 1

The assassination of heroes was once a warning . . . for an invasion that nearly destroyed the world. Nations were slaughtered, cities were erased from existence, and defending armies were crushed into oblivion. In weeks all life stood on the verge of extinction. But the end did not come. Instead the black horde vanished, leaving terrified survivors...and rumors. As the centuries passed the holocaust faded into legend, and finally myth. Across the southern sea a gifted young man is completing his training.

Thinblade: Sovereign of the Seven Isles, Book 1

When second son Alexander Valentine loses his brother to an assassin's arrow, he discovers that his family protects an ancient secret and reluctantly finds himself at the center of the final battle of a war that was supposed to have ended two thousand years ago. Pursued by the dark minions of an ancient enemy, Alexander flees to the mountain city of Glen Morillian where he discovers that he is the heir to the throne of Ruatha, one of the Seven Isles, but before he can claim the throne he must recover the ancient Thinblade.

The Company: A Novel of the CIA

"If Robert Littell didn't invent the American spy novel," says Tom Clancy, "he should have." In this spectacular Cold-War-as-Alice-in-Wonderland epic, Littell, "the American le Carre," takes us down the rabbit hole and into the labyrinthine world of espionage that has been the CIA for the last half-century. "Ostensibly a single novel, [
The Company] can also be read as an anthology of cracking good spy stories," says
Publishers Weekly.

Reamde

Richard Forthrast created T’Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game. But T’Rain’s success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player’s electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game’s virtual universe - and Richard is at ground zero.

The Bourne Identity: Jason Bourne Series, Book 1

He was dragged from the sea, his body riddled with bullets. There are a few clues: a frame of microfilm surgically implanted beneath the skin of his hip; evidence that plastic surgery has altered his face; strange things he says in his delirium, which could be code words. And a number on the film negative that leads to a bank account in Zurich, four million dollars, and a name for the amnesiac: Jason Bourne. Now he is running for his life.

Revelation Space

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.

Somme: Into the Breach

No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will be hard to ignore during the centennial year. Despite this, this book shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able repeatedly to break through the German front lines.

The Passage

Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old, and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is.... Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row.... He's wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming.... It is.

House of Suns

Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.

World Seed: Game Start: World Seed Series, Book 1

The year is 2245, and the world has undergone explosive growth in multiple industries. The age of Virtual Reality came long ago, opening up new fields for people to enjoy and seek employment. There were even those that chose to sacrifice their physical bodies, becoming digital existences that lived within Internet communities. But with the age of VR, everyone still dreamed of that next step, the next level of adventure.

Red Storm Rising

When Moslem fundamentalists blow up a key Soviet oil complex, making an already critical oil shortage calamitous, the Russians figure they are going to have to take things into their own hands. They plan to seize the Persian Gulf, and more ambitiously, to neutralise NATO. Thus begins Red Storm, an audacious gamble that uses diplomatic maneuvers to cloak a crash military build-up. When Soviet tanks begin to roll, the West is caught off guard. What looks like a thrust turns into an all-out shooting war, possibly the climactic battle for control of the globe.

Consider Phlebas: Culture Series, Book 1

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction - cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade....

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets.

Publisher's Summary

Forbidden the Stars At the end of the 21st century, a catastrophic accident in the asteroid belt has left two surveyors dead. There is no trace of their young son, Alex Manez, or of the asteroid itself. On the outer edge of the solar system, the first manned mission to Pluto, led by the youngest female astronaut in NASA history, has led to an historic discovery: there is a marker left there by an alien race for humankind to find. We are not alone! While studying the alien marker, it begins to react. Four hours later, the missing asteroid appears in a Plutonian orbit, along with young Alex Manez, who has developed some alarming side-effects from his exposure to the kinetic element they call Kinemet. From the depths of a criminal empire based on Luna, an expatriate seizes the opportunity to wrest control of outer space, and takes swift action.The secret to faster-than-light speed is up for grabs, and the race for interstellar space begins!

Music of the Spheres

The technology for interstellar flight exists through the power of Kinemet, but the key to unlocking its code lies in a thousand-year-old scroll left on Earth by an alien species.When the ancient manual is stolen before a full translation is completed, Alex, Michael and Justine scramble to recover it.Along the way, they stumble on an interplanetary conspiracy and uncover a secret that shatters their view of life and shakes the very foundations of our existence.

Worlds Away

For a thousand years the Kulsat Armada has ravaged the galaxy searching for the lost legacy of an extinct race of technologically advanced beings. They destroy anyone who gets in their way.Now they have turned their attention to Earth and are gathering their forces for an invasion.Justine, Michael and Alex each hold a key to stopping the enemy, but they are worlds away from each other, and they are running out of time...

At the end of chapters the is a high pitch multi tone. The sound level of this noise is much higher than that of the narration and if you are listening through headphones can be quit painful. There is no warning as to when this will occour so you tend to be listening for, and trying to guess when, the end of the chapter is about to happen so I can turn the volume down. I was listening to the story on the train, and when the end of chapter noise happened, every body in the compartment turned to look, it was annoying them as well as me.

Nicely put together story with characters you like. The writing is simple but the characters are real. What I like best about the books is that Audible offers all three books in the series for the price of one credit. Please Audible start doing that more frequently for the older Sci Fi series!

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Kingsley

Henely Brook, Australia

31/03/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Enjoyable story. Good narration. Horrid production"

The Interstellar Age is an enjoyable read, with a few missteps along the way. Set in the late 21st century Earth has set up a lunar station and are out mining and exploring the galaxy. Space travel is still fairly slow, although much quicker than current travel, taking 6 months to head out to Pluto. The various countries of Earth still exist in a shape similar to what we know now, but have all incorporated to become a series of large companies - America Corp, Canada Corp etc. (and yet it doesn't appear to have ever been mergers of these companies. wouldnt poor 'companies' be swallowed by rich ones?)

And then (which is the story this book follows) someone discovers the trick to light speed travel and the universe is opened up.

In many ways (the child character, the space mining, and other things) this book reminds me of Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston's Formic War series (prequels to Ender's Game). The central idea of the book - there are aliens out there and they are leaving markers behind to help us move forward - reminds me of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Overall it presents and enjoyable and interesting story of space travel, political (corporate?) intrigue and survival.

The 2nd and 3rd book in the series (also part of this set) continue the Orson Scott Card feel in some ways, but no necessarily the best ways. The 'science of space travel' in the book end up in a not dissimilar place to the space travel in Card's Xenocide or Dan Simmon's 'Rise of Endymion' both of which I enjoyed but found extremely silly.

Stylistically there is no one style to the book – it switches between general 3rd person narration, to reports, to news broadcasts, to 1st person diary entries, back to 3rd person etc. The continually switching does not harm the book, but it does make it a little strange. Some of the styles work better than others, such as some of the 1st person diary entries don’t feel like they ring true.

Other minor issues exist throughout that drew me out of the story – some of the technology is much more advanced but much feels less than we have now. At one point it is mentioned that a character can give verbal commands to a computer but the computer cannot respond verbally. My phone can currently respond verbally to commands, so in 80 years from now I would expect that computers could do. Another thing like this was the cars on Earth – no automation or self-driving. Someone was getting picked up by their wife. Another had to work out the best way to get around traffic.

Each book skips forward a decade or so, but we don’t see much change in technology really.

A news report mentions that religion doesn’t exist anymore, something I cannot imagine being slightly a realistic prediction for 80 years’ time. It not really explained how or why all governments are incorporated, it’s just said and we are supposed to take it as a given. This is again something I cannot see happening in 80 years. These two things, to me, don’t make sense in light of where we as a society currently are and where we have come from, and the way humans act and think.

Still, the issues aside, I enjoyed the book.

And then we come to the narration. Dave Wright does okay. He generally gets inflection right (although one point there was a line a character said followed by the narrator saying something like "his voice dripping with sarcasm", yet Wright hadn’t actually delivered the line sarcastically.), he provides different voices for characters and provides a range of accents.

However the audio production is horrid. Between each chapter and each change of scene within a chapter there is an R2D2-ish beeping noise. Highly annoying and made me struggle to actually continue. When reading what the computers says (which, remember, isn’t said aloud but just displayed on the screen) he uses a distortion to make it sound robotic. 100 years from now and they can't make a non-robotic voice? My phone or GPS doesn’t sound robotic now. There were many other things like this throughout the book - effects and modifications that were annoying, drew you out of the story or just plain didn’t make sense.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Angus

Fort Collins, CO, United States

30/03/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Okay Story, but performance choice error."

Any additional comments?

The roots of the Mayan civilization lore tell of the rising and falling of worlds. Human kind gaining the secret technology to travel the stars ends one and begins another. Upon the discovery of the element known as Kinemet and the Plutonian artifact that cycles through the spectrum as a vessel made of this material approaches, human kind is forced to admit that other sentients exist.The story is woven around the orphaned son of asteroid prospectors, Alex Minez; Major Turner of NASA; Michael Sanderson of Canada Corporation and Chou Yen, a notorious criminal. The intrigue bounces around the solar system for decades before faster than light travel is survived and the big bad beyond is realized.This is a good and well paced story. The hand waving is not too bad and most of the plot developments proceed well except for a certain CEO who keeps doing really gullible things. The narrator had a pretty good range of voice changes. As a product I will state that the scene or chapter change sound effect needed to be volume equalized to the rest of the work, it really is obnoxious. Overall I give this a three out of five satisfaction units.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

ken

07/06/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"whats with the beeps"

Would you try another book from Valmore Daniels and/or Dave Wright?

no

What didn’t you like about Dave Wright’s performance?

bad character voicing, should stick to just reading the story

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

anger, whats with the beeps at every chapter

Any additional comments?

can't use earphones to listen to this book, would go deaf with the beeps between chapters

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

A. M. Waite

Maine, USA

12/05/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"A scifi adventure I wish I had read, not heard"

I'll be honest, I loved the setting, the characters, the writing. It's a steal getting the three books in one. I wish I had read the book instead of listening to it, however. The production of this audiobook almost ruined a great story and that would have been an incredible shame.

I'm going to chime in with many of the reviewers and complain about the incredibly terrible production choices of this book. Other reviews go into detail, and yes, it really is that bad. The sound effects actually hurt my ears a couple times when I had headphones on.

As for the book, Daniels' pacing is excellent. There's a big story to be told, but it's not rushed or bogged. To keep things interesting, the book(s) will often jump between journal-styled logs to give a first person perspective, and then return to third person.

Daniels also does well giving life to many different characters. A young boy trying to get away with playing video games instead of doing homework was written just as believably as an adult woman thinking about how she traded career for family.

--I received a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.--

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Shanti

United States

19/12/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Why did it have to end?"

OMG this story is fabulous! Its a page turner, never a dull moment. I just wish it never had to end. Its going to be hard now to find another audible to listen to after this fun and exciting ride.The plots, both main and background are intriguing and unique. Character development was great. You come to know and care about the characters. The settings were different and full of imagination. This is total high fantasy scifi. This story was unexpectedly better than I had hoped. It moves and keeps you on the edge of your seat!Now the narrator. The narrative parts were done perfectly. The voices of the characters wasn't bad or good. Just mediocre. I've listened to worse and better. I dont see any reason to pass on such a fanatically written piece of work. I honestly feel passing on this story because of one bad review would be a loss. Its just to good!!! An average narrator in respect to the just the characters voices isn't enough to hurt the listen. The ride is great!!! This is my honest review via a promotion. Now I have to go to my library and hope I find a listen that wont bore me after this exciting one! *I cheered at the end. Did not expect that! :)

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Gregory

DRYDEN, NY, United States

19/12/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Would love to recommend, but production concerns."

(Copy received for review)

I'm so torn on this book. First, it is a solid piece of SciFi. I find it reminiscent of Clarke and Pohl Anderson, that late 20th century academic sci fi where the reveal is all in the dance, and counter. It's a chess game of a book, not a game of paintball.

I wish I could wholeheartedly recommend the audio version, but I have to say the production left me quite cold. I like the timbre of David's voice, and he's very solid on some parts, but I think his range might have been a bit too narrow for the number of characters.

Also, the production comes across as not having decided whether it was to be a radio play, or a book. The effects used for certain voices I found removed me from the story, and with sound-effecting some audio, it made the dialog tags superfluous, but they were still in the production. Most difficult, the section break audio was too much for me. (Both jarring, too frequent, and too loud)

I hope this author makes more works, and honestly I hope he works with this narrator. I think they can pair very well, but the bells and whistles (rather literally) on this piece leave me wishing I had it on my kindle instead.

4 of 6 people found this review helpful

steven

09/11/14

Overall

Performance

Story

"Good plot, god awful narration"

Any additional comments?

Have just finished listening to the entire series, it was tough going though and considered many times letting it go, the one thing that kept me going through this was the story itself. Good concept, good characters if a bit rushed at time. The thing that let it down completely though was narration, it was by far the worst I have ever came across in all my many years on audible. The voices of each and every character where delivered in a style that can only be described as an astonished 5 year old, inflection was awful. Seriously, they had 80 year old, very wise and learned men with the voices of little kids. In order to get through I had to try and take each delivered sentence and imagine it as I would have read it rather than the awful way it was delivered by the narrator.

Would I recommend this, yes, but not in audible format. Go buy the book.

4 of 7 people found this review helpful

B. H. H. Mulder

Groningen, NL

04/12/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"More science in the fiction"

I like more science in my fiction. There was too much metaphysical mumbo jumbo being bandied about. It may have been the reader but i got a real 'floaty' feeling for large parts of the book.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Amazon Customer

25/03/17

Overall

Performance

Story

"great book"

I really liked the story line. it was well planed out and Just the right amount of detail. he doesn't go over board and bore you to death like a few other authors I've seen. The narrator was good I liked the fact that he changed his voice for the different characters plus he used some sound effects to add to the experience. I would definitely read more if the was more books. over all a good book and worth the time

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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